🌎 Discussion: Online Piracy, AI, Net Neutrality, Killswitch, and Other Internet Issues II

[childeroland]

Has the Government Spied on You? New Website to Allow You to Find Out

A new website has been launched which will allow people to see if they have been spied on illegally by the UK or U.S. intelligence services. Privacy International, a London-based charity which defends the right to privacy, today launched a programme which it says will mean intelligence agencies will be “held to account” for the surveillance they carried out on the public on a global scale.

Earlier this month a secretive tribunal ruled that the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had acted unlawfully when spying on British citizens up until December 2014, as the rules governing the surveillance was kept secret. The court proceedings were brought against them by Privacy International, and human rights organisations Liberty and Amnesty International.

Privacy International is now calling on anyone who thinks they were spied on, and even those who don’t, to register their name and contact details on their specially built platform. The charity will then collate the inquiries, which it says are welcome from anywhere in the world, and submit them to the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the same court that ruled against GCHQ in early February. If the IPT is able to establish that an individual’s communications were illegally shared with GCHQ, they are obliged to inform them, although the process could take months or even years.

The project’s webpage asks if you’ve ever “made a phone call, sent an email, or, you know, use the internet?... Chances are, at some point over the past decade, your communications were collected by one of NSA’s mass surveillance programs and passed on to Britain’s intelligence agency, GCHQ.” There is a simple form to fill out with your contact details and name, which Privacy International will then take to court, “demanding that [GCHQ] finally come clean on unlawful surveillance”.

Eric King, the deputy director of Privacy International, says that the platform is important because up until now there has been no way for an individual to explicitly find out if their information and data has been shared between the U.S. and UK. “The public have a right to know if they were illegally spied on, and GCHQ must come clean on whose records they hold that they should never have had in the first place.”

However, whether GCHQ’s actions amount to ‘spying’ is still a point of contention between those who want to prosecute the agency and those in favour of its actions. David Omand, the former head of GCHQ says that while “bulk interception” took place, analysts were only allowed to look at material that was “likely to be of intelligence value”.

Omand has spoken out about how he believes the agency is misrepresented in the media and that the only mistake made by the government was not to be clear about what they were doing in their Code of Practice, which is now being amended. “The only mistake of the government (a Home Office not GCHQ responsibility) was not publishing some years ago these two paragraphs as part of the Code of Practice - hence the technical breach of their ECHR obligation that citizens need to know how the law applies to them.”

King disagrees: “We don’t take that position. For us, mass surveillance is the constant collection of the personal information of millions if not billions of people. The court could not have been clearer that GCHQ were failing to act lawfully.” He also indicates that the ‘authorisation’ that was given was often in purposefully broad terms. “They might literally be that they are allowed to conduct ‘surveillance against terrorists’”, he says. “[Surveillance] is therefore down to the individual analysts who have no particular restraints on their practices or behaviour.”

“We’re launching this platform today so people can find out if they were part of it. One of the huge problems is that GCHQ operates so much in secret,” King concludes.

Kris Hollington, a Newsweek correspondent who last year was allowed inside GCHQ’s ‘Doughnut’ headquarters, echoes Omand’s sentiments to some extent when he says that although the agency has the ability to store bulk data, it can’t analyse it in detail without legal backing - a warrant signed by the home or foreign secretary. However, as Hollington points out, “We also know, thanks to Snowden, that GCHQ’s Network Analysis Centre does have the processing power to analyze vast amounts of intercepted internet data for details on individuals. As to whether GCHQ always obtains warrants before they start sifting, we just have to take their word for it.”

“All GCHQ is prepared to say is that its activities are “legal, and proportionate”. And that’s the problem. We’re expected to trust GCHQ.”

 

[Greens]

This is an elaborate plan constructed by GCHQ to weed out dissidents!

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Republicans Resigned to FCC Vote Expected to Enforce Net Neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on Thursday to regulate the Internet as a public good, the New York Times reports, and Republican lawmakers who have opposed the impending decision are backing down.

According to the Times, the Republican opposition has folded under mounting pressure from Internet users mobilized by companies like Tumblr, Twitter, and Netflix.

"Tech companies would be better served to work with Congress on clear rules for the road. The thing that they're buying into right now is a lot of legal uncertainty," Senator John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said. "I'm not sure exactly what their thinking is.

"The closer we get to the FCC rubber-stamping President Obama's internet grab, the more disturbing it becomes," Representative Greg Walden, the Republican chairman of the House communications and technology subcommittee, said in a statement.

Democrats have refused to even talk about legislation until after Thursday's vote, the Times reports.

"We're not going to get a signed bill that doesn't have Democrats' support," said Thune. "I told Democrats, Yes, you can wait until the 26th, but you're going to lose the critical mass I think that's necessary to come up with a legislative alternative once the FCC acts."

"This is not East Coast-West Coast thing. It's not a for-profit company versus nonprofit thing. It's all of us," said Dave Steer, the Mozilla Foundation's director for advocacy. "We came together under the banner of Team Internet."

The Guardian reports that on Wednesday the House oversight committee will begin investigating claims that President Obama railroaded the FCC into voting to enforce net neutrality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/t...reakingNews&contentID=30313007&pgtype=article

Looks like we won this one! Good to see something go the right way instead of being bought by huge corporations

 

[childeroland]

Net Neutrality: FCC Approves New Rules of the Road for Internet Service

The FCC approved robust rules of the road for the Internet on Thursday, a move that supporters believe will prevent conglomerates from consolidating control over the flow of online content, but that critics characterize as a huge regulatory overreach.

The FCC’s approach is one favored by many public interest groups, Hollywood content creators and a large number of web companies including Netflix and Twitter: It is reclassifying Internet service as a Title II telecommunications service, a regulatory designation akin to that of a utility.

The FCC’s move was intended to give it solid authority to impose rules over Internet service. They prohibit ISPs from blocking or throttling content, as well as from collecting payments from content providers for speedier access to their subscribers. The latter has been commonly referred to as the idea that ISPs would eventually create Internet “fast lanes.”

The sharply divided 3-2 vote on Thursday may not spell the end of a decade-long debate over net neutrality but a new period of contentiousness. The FCC’s approach is strongly opposed by cable and telecom companies which provide wired and wireless Internet service, along with congressional Republicans who have already launched hearings and inquiries into the FCC’s rulemaking. They say that the reclassification of the Internet will burden the industry with unnecessary regulation.

In unveiling his proposal earlier this month, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler even called them “the strongest open Internet protections ever proposed by the FCC.”

At the meeting, Wheeler said that the Internet was “simply too important to be left with out rules and a referee on the field…It is simply too important to allow broadband providers to be the ones making the rules.”

He said that the plan was no more a “secret plan to regulate the Internet,” as some critics have charged, than the First Amendment was an effort to regulate free speech.

“Today is a red letter day for Internet freedom,” he said.

The FCC also adopted a “general conduct rule” that will allow the agency to monitor future developments of the Internet.

Although the very term net neutrality is abstract, its biggest supporters, such as the Writers Guild of America, say that the rules were necessary to prevent major media companies from exploiting broadband to their own advantage, like paying huge sums to establish “fast lanes” on the web to give their TV shows and movies an advantage over smaller sites or independent creators.

At the meeting, Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy, testified in favor of the rules, along with Veena Sud, executive producer of “The Killing.” Sud talked of new opportunities for content and for female showrunners with increasing competition from online video, noting how Netflix picked up the series after it was dropped by AMC.

“What you do today is secure the future of the open Internet and make sure all our voices are heard,” she said, warning that major Internet providers were already starting to exert their role as a “gatekeeper” to the flow of content online.

The FCC also played a video from Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, endorsing the FCC’s approach.

The FCC’s move has tremendous implications for the future of online video. One of the most vocal of all major companies in favor of net neutrality was Netflix, which urged the FCC to impose strong rules but also to extend them to another part of the Internet ecosystem — the connection point where it delivers its streaming content to an ISP for delivery to the consumer.

Netflix had complained that Comcast and Verizon last year forced it to make payments for “interconnection,” refusing to upgrade their systems so that their signal wasn’t degraded when it arrived on a subscriber’s screen. Comcast and other ISPs, however, contend that Netflix has mischaracterized the issue.

Wheeler’s proposal covered those “interconnection” points, allowing companies to file complaints to the agency for review over whether an ISP has engaged in unreasonable practices. But there was last-minute negotiation between other commissioners over the exact language of the rules, with such connection points governed by a provision covering “Internet access services.”

Wheeler has billed his proposal as a “21st century” approach to Title II regulation, as it also restricts the FCC from imposing rate regulation, tariffs or limits on bundling. Wheeler has pointed to other industries, like wireless phone service, where Title II regulation has worked when applied to new technology, even as Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly were skeptical that it won’t lead to some future price regulation. Both voted against the FCC’s action.

In his dissent, Pai accused the FCC of ceding to President Obama’s support for reclassifying the Internet. “We shouldn’t be a rubber stamp to political decisions made by the White House,” he said.

Pai said that the action “marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet” and predicted it would lead to higher prices for Internet service, slower speeds, less innovations and less choice.

O’Rielly called it a “monumental and unlawful power grab.”

ISPs have hinted at litigation, and in Congress, Republicans introduced their own net neutrality bill last month.

That legislation would also ban ISPs from blocking, throttling and so-called paid prioritization, a turnabout from many GOP lawmakers’ previous positions that such rules were unnecessary. But prospects for the legislation are uncertain as Democrats balk at provisions that also would limit the FCC’s authority, such as in adapting rules to changing technology.

Nevertheless, net neutrality advocates note that ISPs largely brought the new regulations on themselves.

The FCC passed a set of open Internet regulations in 2010 that were weaker — for instance, wireless firms were excluded from an anti-discrimination rule. Although major Internet providers like Comcast and AT&T were lukewarm to the rules, they didn’t challenge them. But Verizon did, filing a court challenge to the FCC’s authority.

A federal appeals court sided with Verizon, leaving the onus on the FCC to come up with a new set of guidelines. Wheeler’s initial proposal would have governed an ISP’s treatment of Internet traffic based on whether it was “just and reasonable” — a standard that net neutrality advocates pounced on as being too weak.

After ongoing protests in front of the FCC’s Washington headquarters, as well as a segment on John Oliver’s HBO series “Last Week Tonight,” the wonkish issue broke through D.C. policymaking circles. The FCC was inundated with more than 4 million comments, a record, most of them in favor of the agency imposing strong protections. But the turning point came in November when President Obama announced his support for reclassification.

By January, it was clear that Wheeler was changing his direction and pursuing the same approach.

Hollywood studios largely stayed out of this debate — with the MPAA filing just one brief with the FCC urging the agency not to impose its rules on content, which it did not. Other than the Writers Guild of America, Hollywood unions also stayed out of the debate.

Yet the Internet Assn., which represents Google, Twitter, Yahoo and other major Internet companies, say that the new rules will prove important for content creators.

“Small and independent content creators stand to benefit from net neutrality, because the success of a project is dependent on the quality and merit of an idea and not from a paid relationship with broadband gatekeepers,” said spokesman Noah Theran.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who has been among the most prominent lawmakers on Capitol Hill pushing for tough rules, suggested in a statement earlier this week that the FCC’s action is to keep the Internet as open as it is. “For decades now, we’ve seen the Internet be an engine for innovation and economic growth,” he said. “And that hasn’t just happened while net neutrality was in place; it’s happened because of net neutrality.”

Commissioner Michael Copps, long an advocate of reclassification of the Internet, said that the FCC “enshrined real Open Internet protection for all broadband consumers, including mobile.

“The FCC has never done a better job of serving the public interest,” he said in a statement released after the vote.

Copps attended the hearing along with figures from the tech community and public interest groups, including Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.

John Sununu and Harold Ford Jr., honorary co-chairs of the group Broadband for America, said in a statement that the FCC’s action was “one giant step backwards for America’s broadband networks and everyone else who depends on them. These ‘Title II’ rules go far beyond protecting the Open Internet, launching a costly and destructive era of government micromanagement that will discourage private investment in new networks and slow down the breakneck innovation that is the soul of the Internet today.”

 

[Tech]

I'm not very well-versed on net neutrality, but I generally have an attitude of if it isn't broken, don't fix it. What's broken with current system that we need regulation and fees that will be passed to the consumer?

I don't know if I agree internet should be compared to phone calls as utility. I can see e-mail, but not the entire internet, compiled of servers, websites, etc.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I'm not very well-versed on net neutrality, but I generally have an attitude of if it isn't broken, don't fix it. What's broken with current system that we need regulation and fees that will be passed to the consumer?

I don't know if I agree internet should be compared to phone calls as utility. I can see e-mail, but not the entire internet, compiled of servers, websites, etc.

Net neutrality actually does take the stance of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Net neutrality is keeping the internet as it is.

Without net neutrality websites will be more expensive to use or they'll be much slower. The only one who benefits in that scenario are powerful telecom companies. We as consumers would be screwed.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Net Neutrality: FCC Approves New Rules of the Road for Internet Service

Talk about a close call.

3 for net neutrality and 2 against.

This decision could've easily went the other way.

Thankfully, like SOPA, public outrage turned the tide but we won this battle by a hair and the war continues.

 

[wiegeabo]

Here's the thing, what wasn't broken is that we used to have net neutrality. Not codified into law, but it was just the way things were done. Then Comcast and Verizon tried to gouge consumers for more, and consumers bit back.

So, in essence, this is making the internet not broken again.


It's not the internet being regulated, it's the ISPs.

Currently, about half the country only have two choices when it comes to selecting a broadband provider. About a third only have one choice. The rest are lucky to have more than 2 (which means they probably only have 3 or 4 to choose from).

There's no real competition here. And because most access to the internet relies on infrastructure being in place (cable lines, phone lines, etc) there's no real way for competitors to break into the marketplaces.

As for fees passed to consumers, that's what broke things. Comcast started charging Netflix money or they'd throttle speeds for Netflix delivery. (Essentially, extortion). What makes this such an anti-competitive practice is that Comcast also delivers content over the internet, making it one of Netflix's competitors.


And how do we know the ISPs were gouging consumers by either over charging or restricting bandwidth? Because every time Google Fiber rolls into a city, the main ISP in the city can suddenly charge less, or miraculously provide higher speeds. AT&T in Austin just said they can do gigabit internet too!...just after Google Fiber rolled into town .

 

[wiegeabo]

Talk about a close call.

3 for net neutrality and 2 against.

This decision could've easily went the other way.

Thankfully, like SOPA, public outrage turned the tide but we won this battle by a hair and the war continues.

Eh, it was voted right down party lines. If there'd been another Republican on the panel, it probably would have lost.

 

[Tech]

Net neutrality actually does take the stance of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Net neutrality is keeping the internet as it is.

Without net neutrality websites will be more expensive to use or they'll be much slower. The only one who benefits in that scenario are powerful telecom companies. We as consumers would be screwed.

We need to pass hundreds of pages of legislation to keep something the way it is right now? That doesn't pass the sniff test to me. You're saying its not broken now but we need this legislation to prevent some calamity in the future?
I can understand being anti-monopolist...but there are side consequences of legislation like this that might increase costs for consumers, which is what I'm worried about. I don't really have problems with access to internet now. I understand maybe not as many choices, but creating broadband networks is expensive and telecommunications companies should be able to get benefits from their investments, in my opinion.

 

[wiegeabo]

We need to pass hundreds of pages of legislation to keep something the way it is right now? That doesn't pass the sniff test to me. You're saying its not broken now but we need this legislation to prevent some calamity in the future?
I can understand being anti-monopolist...but there are side consequences of legislation like this that might increase costs for consumers, which is what I'm worried about. I don't really have problems with access to internet now. I understand maybe not as many choices, but creating broadband networks is expensive and telecommunications companies should be able to get benefits from their investments, in my opinion.

Not some future calamity that might happen. It's happening now. Which is why all this came about.

Net Neutrality was the way things were done. But it wasn't law.

Over the last couple of years, the ISPs starter pushing and breaking net neutrality because they realized they could make more money without providing additional service. In fact, they realized they could make this money by withholding the services they had been providing.

So, now we've had to declare them utilities under Title II to restore what we once had. The ISPs ended up biting themselves in the ass to make a few more bucks.

Personally, I hope these monopolies are broken up, much like AT&T was in the 80's. Because when that happened, and real competition was introduced into the marketplace, prices drastically dropped and services and innovation rose.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Thanks For the Net Neutrality, Oligarchs

"Net neutrality" will be the law of the land following the Federal Communications Commission's vote to reclassify broadband Internet services as public utilities. Please take some time this week to thank the outspoken citizens who made this possible. These heroes of the open Internet are regular folk, just like you and me, with names like Microsoft, eBay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Congrats to a major industry on its lobbying victory!

Because telecom and cable companies vociferously oppose regulation of their terrible, anti-consumer practices, it's easy to paint the net neutrality fight as pitting greedy and self-interested corporations against earnest and sincere activists. But that's reductive and wrong. The biggest hint that that isn't the correct lens through which to view this fight is that the earnest and sincere activists won the fight, and the corporations lost. That isn't just a Washington rarity, it is a Washington impossibility. No, net neutrality won (pending future court battles) because the earnest and sincere activists represented a different group of greedy and self-interested corporations.

The FCC received a record four million public comments on their net neutrality proposal. The overwhelming majority of those comments supported the basic tenets of net neutrality. The New York Times quotes one excited activist: "This shows that the Internet has changed the rules of what can be accomplished in Washington." It has, though not quite in the way he means. The net neutrality fight shows that the Internet industry can consider its political influence to be on par with that of older, more established industries. Those public comments would have meant nothing at all if they hadn't represented a policy priority also shared by Google, one of the largest and most influential corporations in the world. And even Google wouldn't have beaten Verizon and Comcast alone—it lost the last time it had this fight, in 2010. Google had to make like a real global megacorporation and form an alliance with its ostensible competitors in its own field in order to present a unified front to official Washington — just as energy, healthcare, finance and telecommunications companies have been doing for decades. The corporate Internet grew up, formed a cartel, and won a major policy battle.

Don't get me wrong. Regulating broadband as a utility is (in my opinion) the correct policy. This is as close as Washington gets to a victory for the forces of "good." I would just urge everyone to keep in mind that the forces of good in this instance won not because millions of people made their voices heard, but because the economic interests of a few giant corporations aligned with the position of those millions of people. And I say that not simply to be a killjoy (though I do love being a killjoy), but because if anything is to change, we musn't convince ourselves that actual victory for the masses is possible in this fundamentally broken system. Please don't begin to believe that the American political establishment is anything but a corrupt puppet of oligarchy.

American politicians are responsive almost solely to the interests and desires of their rich constituents and interest groups that primarily represent big business. Casual observation of American politics over the last quarter-century or so should make that clear, but if you want supporting evidence, look to the research of Vanderbilt political scientist Larry Bartels, and Princeton's Martin Gilens and Northwestern's Benjamin Page. Gilen and Page's conclusions are easily summed up: "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Political battles are won when the rich favor them. America's rich have lately become rather progressive on certain social issues, and those issues have rather suddenly gone from political impossibilities to achievable dreams. This is why same-sex marriage is an inevitability and marijuana decriminalization seems more likely than ever, but we can't dismantle megabanks or raise the estate tax. This is why healthcare reform couldn't happen without the buy-in (and buying off) of the bloated, awful healthcare industry and the doctor cartel. (And speaking of the doctor cartel: One of the few major political issues where the ultra-rich seem to have trouble getting their way is immigration reform, but there are plenty of wealthy professionals who rely on protectionism to keep their incomes elevated.) This dynamic explains the entire "education reform" project, which is an attempt to dismantle and re-create the American public school system, dreamed up (and almost solely supported) by the wealthy elite, most of whom have no education expertise or experience in urban public schools.

We have net neutrality for the same reason that copyright terms will be extended indefinitely forever and the Defense Department will keep being forced to buy incredibly expensive planes that don't actually work: Because a large industry had a strong opinion on the subject.

http://justice.gawker.com/thanks-for-the-net-neutrality-oligarchs-1688571806/+hudsonhongo

Def paints the whole thing in a new light and makes a lot of sense when presented this way. I still believe that this was the right thing to do and will ultimately be what's best for the net but knowing it wouldn't have been done had it not been for some very powerful interest kind of makes it feel dirty

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Why America's Internet Is So Crappy and Slow

You may have heard that the internet is winning: net neutrality was saved, broadband was redefined to encourage higher speeds, and the dreaded Comcast-Time Warner Cable megamerger potentially thwarted. But the harsh reality is that America's internet is still fundamentally broken, and there's no easy fix.

An Economy Built on Wires

When I say "fundamentally broken" I don't just mean that it's slow and crappy, though there is that. It's also broken as a paid service.

The internet is a tangible thing, a network of infrastructure pulsing with light, winding its way into and beneath buildings. It's also a marketplace. There is the physical location where the fiber-optic cables full of data cross, and then there are the financial deals that direct the traffic down each specific set of wires. This combination of physical wires and ephemeral business transactions will shape the future of the digital world.

In order to comprehend just how broken internet service is, you first have to understand how the physical infrastructure of the internet works. Former Gizmodo contributor Andrew Blum described the underlying infrastructure wonderfully his book about the physical heart of the internet, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet:

In the basest terms, the internet is made of pulses of light. Those pulses might seem miraculous, but they're not magic. They are produced by powerful lasers contained in steel boxes housed (predominantly) in unmarked buildings. The lasers exist. The boxes exist. The internet exists…​

There's also wireless data of course, but even those signals need physical towers to send and receive them.

Those pulses of lights—which are packets of data—travel through the internet's wires, taking wrong turns, finding faster routes, and eventually reaching their destinations. But each of those routes is owned and maintained by somebody. If you think of the wires as roads, the setup is something like city streets, state highways, and interstates. In internet terms, those different kinds of roads are called tiers, and there are many network tiers stacked up across the US's continent-spanning network.

Tier 1 is the most powerful as it more or less makes up the backbone of the internet. These are the networks that span the entire globe, sending data under the ocean to far-flung places, the ones that never need to connect to another network to deliver a packet of content. There are only a handful of such networks, run by global corporations like AT&T and Verizon.

The smaller, tier 2 networks connect with each other and with the internet backbone to make it more efficient for those packets of data to reach their destinations. This is the level where a lot of corporate handshake deals to direct traffic take place. And then there's the so-called "last mile." You've probably heard a lot about this idea, and how traffic gets across it.

The last mile is the part of the data's voyage that takes it from local utility poles or underground tubes, into your house, and through the cable that plugs into your computer. It's literally the last stretch of infrastructure that data must traverse on its long journey from the server where it's hosted, to your web browser or email client or whatever. It's the physical infrastructure that connects individual homes to the rest of the network. This is the part of the internet that the new Federal Communications Commission's rules regulate.

The Decaying Last Mile

In the US, the last mile of internet infrastructure is an enormous problem. There are two reasons for this: technical restraints holding back the bandwidth needed to support modern-day internet traffic, and a lack of competition between the major carriers selling internet service to the end user.

Most of America's telecommunications infrastructure relies on outdated technology, and it runs over the same copper cables invented by Alexander Graham Bell over 100 years ago. This copper infrastructure—made up of "twisted pair" and coaxial cables—was originally designed to carry telephone and video services. The internet wasn't built to handle streaming video or audio.

When your streaming video reaches that troubled last mile of copper, those packets will slam on their brakes as they transition from fiber optic cables to copper coaxial cables. Copper can only carry so much bandwidth, far less than what the modern internet demands. Only fiber optic cables, thick twists of ultra-thin glass or plastic filaments that allow data to travel at the speed of light, can handle that bandwidth. They're also both easier to maintain and more secure than copper.

As consumers demand more bandwidth for things like streaming HD movies, carriers must augment their networks—upgrade hardware, lay more fiber, hire more engineers, etc.—to keep traffic moving freely between them. But that costs big money—like, billions of dollars in some cases. Imagine the cost of swapping out the coaxial cables in every American home with fiber optic cables. It's thousands of dollars per mile according to some government records.

And here's the kicker. The last mile infrastructure is controlled by an oligarchy—three big cable companies: Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. You know this well. One in three Americans only have one choice for broadband service; most of the others only have two internet providers to choose from.

Without competition, there's no incentive for internet providers to improve improve infrastructure. These massive telecom companies create a bottleneck in the last mile of service by refusing to upgrade critical infrastructure. And they can charge exorbitant prices for the sub-par service while they're at it.

So your internet is crappy and slow and expensive.

The Network of Bureaucracy

If you want to load a webpage or watch a movie on Netflix, it's not just the last mile of infrastructure that slows down your internet, however. It's also the tier 2 networks, where the weird web of business connections starts tangling things up.

Like last mile infrastructure, there's only a small handful of companies controlling much of the backbone of the internet. Including, once again, telecom giants AT&T and Verizon. AT&T and Verizon not only control tier 1 network, they're also the big players on tier 2, which gives them a huge amount of bargaining power, and a huge amount of bureaucratic control over your slow and crappy internet.

The other carriers that operate tier 2 networks are companies you probably haven't heard of—Cogent, Level3, and Zayo are a few—and they're integral to the internet's success as a global network. These are the networks that manage the crossroads of the internet, making deals that dictate how traffic travels between networks.

A rough sketch of how the internet works. On the left, you have end users—homes and business. On the right, you have the networks making the deals that dictate how internet traffic flows around the globe. Note how content providers (Netflix, YouTube) peer directly with carriers.

Regardless of the physical infrastructure, data can only travel as fast as its predetermined route allows. If tier 2 networks don't strike the right agreements with other networks, that could mean that your data will take a longer route to its destination.

Broadly speaking, a tier 1 network can reach every part of the internet without paying for transit on another network; these are the internet's biggest power brokers. But each of the lesser-known tier 2 middleman carriers must depend on other networks to provide their customers with access to all of the content on the internet.

So picture a map of the internet. If every single network agreed to let other networks use its infrastructure data would flow freely between all points. Unfortunately, not all of the tier 2 networks cooperate.

An illustration of first and second tier networks, a sprawling 180,000 miles of fiber. The yellow lines are wholly owned and operated by top tier carriers, and the orange ones are shared with other carriers.

To keep traffic moving between networks, the carriers have to make interconnect agreements. One type is called a peering agreement, where two carriers exchange traffic freely for mutual benefit. The other is a transit agreement, exchanging traffic for a fee. The economics of these agreements are quite complex—here's a great explainer—but suffice it to say the larger the network, the fewer transit agreements it must pay for.

Tier 2 carriers also forge peering and transit agreements with content providers like Google, Amazon, and Netflix to provide more direct routes to consumers.

This gets complicated because you have a countless number of different networks relying on a limited amount of infrastructure. While fixing the decaying last mile means monopolistic telecom firms shelling out to upgrade copper wires, fiber optic cable is already the industry standard on tier 2 networks—so your internet speeds are affected more by how well these tier 2 carriers are getting along. When these deals go wrong, carriers end up in locked in negotiations that mean you'll wait longer for webpages to load.

The Fiber Future Relies on Competition

In a climate without sufficient competition, American carriers can refuse to improve infrastructure and augment capacity without the fear of losing customers. Where are they going to go? They can either pay a high price for bad service or pay nothing for no service. This has been the status quo in the USA for years, and companies like Verizon have worked hard to keep this status quo by preventing the FCC from doing its job.

That's also why carriers like Verizon are going straight to content providers like Netflix and asking it to pay for more direct routes to customers. Why would Verizon spend its own money on infrastructure, when it can get a content provider to pick up the tab?

This is where the net neutrality debate comes from. The FCC is finally getting aggressive about protecting the open web, and that's great. But net neutrality is not enough. Improving your slow and crappy internet comes down to increasing competition. We need to build new networks with better last mile technology that will give tier 2 networks an alternative to the big cable cartel.

This is going to require some radical approaches, like the bootstrapped ISPs and experimental municipal broadband networks we're starting to see.

While laying fiber is wildly expensive, startups could take a different tack. A San Francisco local ISP called Monkeybrains is using roof-mounted wireless connections and direct fiber access to data centers to offer high speed wireless internet. It costs about $250 to set up the equipment to join Monkeybrains' innovative network, but after that, you can get "insane speeds" for just $35 a month.

There's also the option of building a network from the ground up, like the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee did a few years ago. Starting this year, the federal government is funneling more money towards municipal broadband projects that treat the internet more like a public utility and offer high speeds at low prices. Now it's up to the communities to start up their municipal broadband projects.

President Obama has applauded this path forward, and the FCC is paving the way by tweaking regulations so that help municipal broadband overcome regulations that have traditionally favored big cable and discouraged competition. Some cracks in the oligarchy are starting to show.

At the end of the day, America's broken internet isn't going to fix itself. Monopolistic problems deserve capitalistic solutions. In this case, it's competition—pure and simple. The alternative isn't just frustrating. It's dysfunctional.

http://gizmodo.com/why-americas-internet-is-so-******-and-slow-1686173744/+maxread

Hopefully the tides are a changing for the old internet hear in the states. Amazing how we can invent so many things and then have other countries do it better

 

[wiegeabo]

I'm hoping Title II let's the government break up the oligopoly much like they broke up the AT&T monopoly during the Regan era.

Because when that happened, competition exploded, and so did innovation to maintain competition, and prices finally plummeted. In fact, the creation of wireless phones can be credited to the break up, which paved the way for the research that developed cell signals and wi-fi.

Look at Korea. They essentially placed the ISPs under their version of Title II. By doing so, competition flourished. They now enjoy some of the fastest, cheapest, and most accessible internet in the world.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Read the FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Here

This is it. This is the day that your overly specific and impressively skeptical questions about the Federal Communications Commission's new net neutrality rules can finally be answered. The agency just released the full text of the policy that will protect the open internet.

The full 400 pages of the FCC's policy and research on net neutrality aren't exactly beach reading, but the minutia are integral to the rules' lifespan. These are the nitpicky things that big cable companies plan to challenge in court, the things that Republicans in Congress will use as ammunition to strip the agency of its power to regulate the internet.

In a sobering way, the battle is just beginning. As one analyst told The New York Times, "Telecom lawyers in Washington popped the corks on the champagne. It will be at a least a hundred million in billable hours for them. This will go on for a while."

But there's another quote that better expresses the historical weight of the decision—the first two sentences of the actual rules, now a part of the public record:

The open Internet drives the American economy and serves, every day, as a critical tool for America's citizens to conduct commerce, communicate, educate, entertain, and engage in the world around them. The benefits of an open Internet are undisputed.​

Net neutrality is a good start, now let's defend the open web more fiercely and fix everything that is crappy about the oligarchical broken internet.

Read the full 400 pages here

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Yesterday's Net Neutrality Order is a Win, With a Few Blemishes

Yesterday, the FCC published its new order [PDF] on net neutrality. As promised, the rules start by putting net neutrality on the right legal footing, which means they have a much stronger chance of surviving the inevitable legal challenge. This is the culmination of years of work by public interest advocates and a massive outpouring of public support over the past year. Make no mistake, this is a win for Team Internet!

Now, what about the rules themselves? We're still reviewing, but there's much to appreciate, including bright line rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization of Internet traffic. For example, an ISP cannot degrade customers' access to services that compete with its own offerings and cannot charge tolls to privilege traffic from one web service over others.

We applaud the FCC for listening to Internet users and acting to protect the open Internet from unfair discrimination by mobile and wireline Internet service providers (ISPs). The FCC also listened to our advice to forbear from applying numerous aspects of its authority, aspects that are not necessary to address the critical but narrow problems posed by ISP gatekeepers.

For example, the FCC will not set prices for Internet service and the order includes exemptions for small ISPs. Today's order creates no new taxes or fees, although there is a possibility those will emerge following subsequent hearings and rulemaking regarding disabilities access or a universal service fund to expand broadband coverage. With respect to privacy, the FCC is not forbearing from protecting consumer privacy, but wisely will not import existing rules relating to phone service privacy to broadband providers. Instead, there will be a follow-on rulemaking, one that we will be watching closely.

The FCC generally adopted a positive approach, resting its new rules on the proper legal authority, creating some bright-line protections, and forbearing from most of the provisions that were unnecessary to protecting net neutrality. Nonetheless, we remain concerned about certain elements of the order.

Case-By-Case Evaluation of Reasonableness is Expensive and Leads to Uncertainty

When we first learned of the FCC's intent to rely on a vague "general conduct rule" to evaluate provider conduct on a case-by-case basis, we pointed out the risks inherent in such an approach. The rule does lay out factors that will help guide the analysis of whether a given practice violates the rules, such as the effect on innovation, free expression, and end-user control. However, the rule could still lead to overreach, and will certainly lead to expensive litigation. Indeed, today's order punts many difficult questions to the general conduct rule, which applies whenever conduct doesn't fall into one of the three categories of blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization, and also applies to all disputes relating to interconnection (ISP deals with other Internet infrastructure companies). That means important net neutrality questions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The expense and expertise to raise and respond to issues on that basis could tilt the process in favor of big and established players, like major ISPs and content providers.

ISPs Should Not Be Allowed to Discriminate Against Content They Deem "Unlawful" Without a Court Order

We have long opposed limitations on net neutrality that suggests ISPs can hinder traffic or applications they deem unlawful, or use deep packet inspection to monitor users' Internet traffic. Unfortunately, the FCC has maintained the "lawful content" limitation, and gone farther to state that it does not intend "to prohibit or discourage voluntary practices undertaken to address or mitigate the occurrence of copyright infringement."

The danger of this limitation has already been demonstrated. In 2007, when EFF discovered that Comcast was throttling BitTorrent traffic, Comcast could have argued that it was combating copyright infringement. Of course, BitTorrent was also used to transmit public domain materials such as the Bible, licensed materials such as academic literature and free software, and non-copyrightable data, to name just a few legitimate uses. Under today's rules, this would arguably not be considered a violation of the blanket prohibition on throttling. A user would have to discover and challenge this practice and bring it before the FCC for a case-by-case determination of its reasonableness. This doesn't make matters any worse than they were before, but it is a missed opportunity to improve on the status quo.

The FCC has also failed to give proper consideration to the invasiveness of deep packet inspection, used by ISPs to read a user's Internet traffic. The "lawful content" limitation may give legal cover to this privacy-violating practice. In response, the Commission simply suggests that users protect their own privacy using encryption, virtual private networks, and Tor. While it's a very good idea for users to protect themselves with such tools, that shouldn't be their only protection against the very companies they are forced to trust in order to gain access to the Internet – particularly when ISPs like Verizon have gone to extreme measures to circumvent users' privacy controls. Leaving users to fend for themselves does not bode well for the FCC's future proceedings on privacy rules.

What About Zero Rating?

"Zero Rating" is when an ISP does not consider traffic to a certain website in calculating a user's data usage, usually with respect to a data cap. For example, T-Mobile zero-rates certain music services and Facebook and Wikipedia have a variety of deals around the world creating zero-rated access to their services. Zero rating presents many of the same harms as paid prioritization, and also presents unique harms to competition when low-income users are effectively only able to access the websites of commercial Internet giants and come to perceive those walled gardens as the entire Internet. We recognize the value of providing low-income users with access to knowledge and the ability to interconnect, but these objectives are better achieved by promoting competition and removing access barriers to neutral Internet access.

Yesterday's order does not consider zero rating inherently improper, but proposes to evaluate such arrangements on a case-by-case basis. That has some appeal, as it allows the FCC to take into account the potential public benefits of a given program. But the practice over-all poses significant risks to the future of the Internet, and we'd have preferred a stronger set of parameters.

Overall, yesterday's order was a great step for net neutrality. It was unthinkable a year ago that we would get this far, and the opponents of net neutrality are now clearly on the defensive. The rules will likely withstand the inevitable court challenges, and their bright-line prohibitions on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization will go a long way towards protecting Internet users. There is still a risk of overreach and uncertainty, however, which means Team Internet must stay vigilant and engaged. And we will.

http://gizmodo.com/today-s-net-neutrality-order-is-a-win-with-a-few-blemi-1691207442

I think we all knew it wasn't going to be completely perfect but it looks like they got most of it right

 

[hippie_hunter]

I'm hoping Title II let's the government break up the oligopoly much like they broke up the AT&T monopoly during the Regan era.

It really isn't comparable IMO. AT&T had a genuine monopoly of the United States' phone service that was tolerated until it was discovered that it was illegally using it's monopoly profits from other units to subsidize the costs of its network. AT&T dominated the entire United States, no ISP provider has the reach that AT&T did. Even if Time Warner Cable and Comcast are to merge, it still would not have the extensive outreach that the old AT&T did. And the breakup of AT&T provided opportunities for long distance phone companies like Sprint and MCI to become genuine competitors in the communications market. A breakup of the ISPs would not create a scenario where there is room for other competitors to arise for consumers because in the end these companies do not compete with one another.

The cable/broadband industry on the other hand doesn't really need breaking up IMO. Breaking it up isn't going to change anything. In the end, there will still be no extra choices for consumers and will lead to higher cable prices because the smaller cable companies will be unable to stand up to the Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, Viacom, NBCUniversal, CBS, and 21st Century Fox in regards to how much to charge consumers for their channels.

What should be done instead is end the very monopolistic nature of cable/broadband. We should be allowing Cox, Charter, and Cablevision to expand into other markets held by Time Warner Cable and Comcast. If you're not going to allow Time Warner Cable and Comcast to merge, then you should allow them to expand into each others markets. We should be encouraging Google, AT&T, and Verizon to expand their services to more markets. By creating a truly competitive market, it would radically change the industry into one that is more consumer friendly as opposed to just simply breaking them up for the sake of breaking them up.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Well in part that's what the title II change will do. Part of what was in the rules was that they can't block municipalities from emerging or screw with other smaller companies expanding in the area. A few post up there is a pretty good explainer about the different tiers and until other companies can expand into the tier one nothing is going to change.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

HBO and Friends Want Their Own Pipes for Internet TV

Just when you thought the net neutrality debate had died down, a band of content providers now want special treatment. The Wall Street Journal reports that HBO, Sony, and Showtime are asking internet service providers to be treated as "managed" services. In other words, they want dedicated bandwidth for their video content.

Now's a good time to shake your fist. If HBO and friends get their way, they'll be paying companies like Comcast for "a separate lane [that] would be exempt from monthly data-usage thresholds operators enforce for public Internet traffic." And guess who's going to end up paying for the extra cost of transit? You are.

Don't freak out too much, though. This is not the same thing as paid prioritization, the so-called "fast lane" practice that enables ISPs to treat certain packets of data differently than others. That would be a very bad thing since internet traffic is a zero-sum game. If some packets go faster, others must move more slowly. It would also be a direct violation of the FCC's new net neutrality rules.

What these streaming video companies actually want is dedicated bandwidth. It's sort of analogous to an HOV lane, where the content providers pay for a special road for their data heavy traffic. Some companies, like those that offer digital phone and video-on-demand services, already enjoy these benefits of being managed services. However, as WSJ put it, internet TV getting the same treatment "would tap into a gray area of the debate over 'net neutrality.'" It's not paid prioritization. But it's not necessarily neutral, either.

All that said, pull up a chair because this is going to be a long battle. Content providers like Netflix already pay for special transit agreements with ISPs like Comcast, if only because streaming video requires so much bandwidth. (See the above chart for a rough idea of how the internet works.) Netflix basically doesn't have any other choice.

Fearing the same grim future when their customers pay to watch the word "Buffering" float on a blank screen, HBO and other internet TV companies are looking for a loophole. Managed services might be the one. Eventually, it'll probably be up to the FCC to decide if they can send traffic through it.

http://gizmodo.com/hbo-and-friends-want-their-own-pipes-for-internet-tv-1692468872

Ugh

 

[KevanG]

I'm just curious about downloading things online in the US. If you have a physical copy of something like Robocop and proof of purchase but your DVD player was broken and you downloaded a copy to watch, could you still be charged with downloading something even if you already paid for a copy?

I've never been clear on the whole getting sued for $10,000 over a downloaded file thing.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Technically if you have already purchased something you shouldn't get in trying u me for downloading it. Piracy isn't technically stealing since theft means you take something from someone, with online piracy you are making a copy of the original

 

[KevanG]

I've just heard crazy stories about people downloading stuff and was just curious about how far it goes. I'm in Canada and the worst we get is threats of lawsuits without anything actually happening.

I just think it would be funny to go to court for a company trying to sue you over it, bringing the dvd and receipt and telling them to go **** themselves.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

CISA Bill Promises Safety, But Actually Expands Government Surveillance

Remember when everyone freaked about CISPA, the cybersecurity bill with scary privacy implications? CISA, a similarly-named cybersecurity bill, is here to take its place. Even after adding fifteen amendments, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act is a dangerous piece of legislation.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) was the only Senate Intelligence Committee member to vote against CISA, but he was unsparing with his criticism, calling it "a surveillance bill by another name." He's right.

Kicking the backdoor for spying open wider

Supporters say CISA will help companies share information about cyber threats with the government, and that the bill has been carefully worded to protect personal information. But critics say CISA will be far less effective at boosting cybersecurity than it will as a piece of loophole-happy legislation that allows for increased government surveillance.

CISA, even gussied up with its amendments, kicks open a government-snooping backdoor that'd allow private companies to give the Department of Homeland Security pretty much whatever they wanted as long as it vaguely related to a cyber-threat. It also allows for "defensive measures" against these threats, but offers scant elaboration about what those measures can be beyond noting that they shouldn't cause "substantial" harm. Uh, thanks?

The terms used are so vague that they're essentially meaningless. As long as a company could engage in rhetorical gymnastics that related its data to a "cybersecurity purpose," it'd be fair game to share.

"Given what we know of intelligence agencies willingness to stretch every privacy law to its limits, CISA could potentially authorize a staggering amount of new surveillance," Evan Greer, the campaign director for privacy advocacy group Fight for the Future, told me.

Wired's Andy Greenberg pointed out that CISA will usurp older privacy laws like the Privacy Act of 1974, making it hard to counter.

Oh, and the DHS would automatically share the information with the NSA, the Department of Defense, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so your information could potentially get pored over by a wide variety of government agencies, not just one.

The NSA has whatever the opposite of a good track record is when it comes to abiding by privacy guidelines, so of course there's concern that automatic sharing with the NSA will result in the broadest possible interpretation of the already-menacingly-vague rules laid out here.

CISA protects companies that spill your secrets and attack your files

The bill doesn't require companies to strip personal information before handing it over to the government, as long as the information hasn't been proven to be disconnected from the matter at hand. And while it does encourage companies to weed out irrelevant personal data, it's much easier for the companies to err on the side of not redacting personal data or bothering to find out if shared information is related to the threat or not.

That's a problem: CISA gives a wide berth of immunity to private companies in the bill, which means they'll have zero incentive not to overshare your personal information. CISA would help companies get out of violations of the Wiretap Act, for example.

They'll also have zero incentive to be conservative when launching their "defensive attacks." Companies can launch computer network attacks as a "defensive" measure as long as they don't totally destroy a suspected thief's computer, for example. That'd be cool if we knew companies could be sure that they were attacking the right computers. But with so many ways for cybercriminals to hide their locations and push their dirty work onto zombified computers, this means there's a lot of room for damaging the computers of innocent people.

Let's keep complaining

Public outcry helped kill CISPA (twice) and even though senators keep trying to revive its zombified corpse, there's pushback to block the bill again, including a veto promise from President Obama. CISA, meanwhile, is enjoying much less blowback even though it's just as privacy-corroding as CISPA.

There are plenty of reasons for people who care about privacy to be anti-CISA. But even if you're like "hell yeah bring on the NSA snooping please" this bill is trash. Most major tech companies already share information with each other and it hasn't exactly staunched the steady increase in cyber-attacks.

It's tempting to succumb to outrage fatigue here. We've already dealt with so many crappy, privacy-trampling cybersecurity bills. And there are sure to be more and more to come. But these bills keep cropping up because our government cares more about information control than it does about the privacy of its citizens. The only way to prevent one from eventually passing is to keep caring and letting Congress know these bills are unacceptable each time one is introduced.

http://gizmodo.com/cisa-bill-promises-safety-but-actually-expands-governm-1692675523

I swear these jerks are never going to quit with this crap

 

[KevanG]

Well that's ****ing nice. Once you let groups get away with this it just lets them snowball it until you literally can't stop them. Even if you can they'll just be quieter about it.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

We need a civil libertarian political party.

Like, yesterday.